Could a ban on plastic bags be fatal?

UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES

Debra J. Saunders

Updated 2:49 pm, Sunday, February 10, 2013

Darya Pino, a San Francisco-based scientist, foodie, and writer, of popular blog Summer Tomato, stands for a portrait with a grocery bag she created in partnership with social product development site Quirky.com at the Ferry Building farmer's market in San Francisco.

Photo: Stephen Lam, Special To The Chronicle

Darya Pino, a San Francisco-based scientist, foodie, and writer, of...

People carry plastic bags in Chinatown in San Francisco, Calif., Monday, October 1, 2012. San Francisco's city-wide plastic bag ban went into effect Monday.

Photo: Sarah Rice, Special To The Chronicle

People carry plastic bags in Chinatown in San Francisco, Calif.,...

A Safeway reusable bag is seen being used by a shopper on Monday, January 24, 2011 in San Francisco.

Photo: Lea Suzuki, The Chronicle

A Safeway reusable bag is seen being used by a shopper on Monday,...

A customer opts to pay the ten-cent charge to get a paper bag at Other Avenues in San Francisco, Calif., Monday, October 1, 2012. San Francisco's city-wide plastic bag ban went into effect Monday, and now people will be charged for paper bags.

Photo: Sarah Rice, Special To The Chronicle

A customer opts to pay the ten-cent charge to get a paper bag at...

The first day of the plastic bag ban in San Francisco went relatively smoothly on Monday, October 1st.

Photo: Sarah Rice, Special To The Chronicle

The first day of the plastic bag ban in San Francisco went...

Jeremy Greco rings up customers at Other Avenues in San Francisco, Calif., Monday, October 1, 2012. San Francisco's city-wide plastic bag ban went into effect Monday, and now people will be charged ten cents for paper bags.

Photo: Sarah Rice, Special To The Chronicle

Jeremy Greco rings up customers at Other Avenues in San Francisco,...

San Francisco Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi hands out canvas shopping bags in 2007, in San Francisco. San Francisco's Board of Supervisors passed an ordinance that would require large supermarkets and pharmacies in the city to replace non-biodegradable plastic bags with reusable or recyclable bags, a move that made San Francisco the first city in the U.S. to introduce such a ban.

Photo: Ben Margot

San Francisco Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi hands out canvas shopping...

Yvette Pouyadou (right) of San Francisco loads her groceries in a Walgreen's reusable bag into a car as Michele Doyle (left) of Chico holds open the trunk door on Monday, January 24, 2011 in San Francisco, Calif.

San Francisco passed America's "first-in-the-nation" ban on plastic bags in chain grocery stores and drugstores in 2007. In a research paper for the Wharton School Institute for Law and Economics, law professors Jonathan Klick and Joshua Wright crunched state and federal data on emergency room admissions and food-borne-illness deaths and figured that the San Francisco ban "led to an increase in infections immediately upon implementation."

They found a 46 percent rise in food-borne-illness deaths. The bottom line: "Our results suggest that the San Francisco ban led to, conservatively, 5.4 annual additional deaths."

Is San Francisco's bag ban a killer? Conceivably, yes, but probably not.

Intuitively, the Wharton findings make sense. The city's anti-bag laws are designed to drive consumers to reusable bags. Consumer advice types warn people about the dangers of said bags becoming germ incubators. I got this from the TLC website:

"Designate specific bags for meats and fish. Wash these bags regularly - preferably after each shopping trip - to get rid of bacteria. If your bag is fabric, toss it in the washing machine with jeans, and if it's a plastic material, let it soak in a basin filled with soapy water and either the juice of half a lemon or about a quarter cup of vinegar."

Ask your friends and family how many of them regularly wash their reusable bags - ask how many folks ever have done any of the above steps - and you can intuit that a ban on plastic bags might not be the brightest idea.

San Francisco health officer Tomás Aragón reviewed the Wharton paper and found "a biologically plausible hypothesis" but "sloppy" research. "It's a complicated topic. It's a little surprising that he would put this out there without a peer review," he added. If the professors had consulted with an epidemiologist, they would have understood how the city's unique demographics contribute to specific intestinal issues. (Unlike Aragón, I'm trying to be delicate here and not share too much information.)

In short, the doctor concluded that the study raised more questions than it answered.

Dave Heylen of the California Grocers Association ripped the study for not understanding something really basic about how the San Francisco bag ban worked at first. "People weren't using reusable bags, they were using paper bags," Heylen said.

Be it noted, the grocers have supported proposals for a statewide ban on plastic bags - which would require supermarkets to charge for single-use bags - because they provide what the sponsor of Sacramento's latest effort, Assemblyman Marc Levine, D-San Rafael, calls "uniformity of experience" for shoppers and store owners. (It also means big stores can charge for bags and blame the government.)

For his part, Klick told me he cannot "rule out the possibility that there was something peculiar that happened in San Francisco." Maybe the cause isn't the bag ban. That's why there should be more studies that look into death rates and food-borne-illness reports in the many communities - San Jose and San Mateo and Alameda counties, for example - that have passed bag laws since then-Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi introduced a bill to make San Francisco America's first city to ban plastic bags.

Mayor Ed Lee's office said the mayor will look into the health consequences of the city's now-tougher bag laws if Aragón so recommends. That doesn't seem likely. Likewise, Levine didn't sound particularly concerned.

Maybe they should be. More than 60 California communities have bag bans, which means more Californians are using reusable bags. Most families probably aren't washing them. And that's not healthy.

California politicians didn't even bother studying the possible health effects of their anti-bag laws. They were in such a hurry to tell their constituents what's best for them, they forgot to check how their busybody scheme might go wrong.

More reasons to oppose bag bans

-- It's another nanny state law that coerces law-abiding shoppers to change their conduct.

-- Single-use bags are not the problem. In 2011, they represented 0.13 percent of California's total waste stream.

-- According to the British Environment Agency, consumers have to reuse a cloth bag 131 times to present lesser global warming impact than conventional bags.

-- When consumers wash reusable cloth bags, they can wear out, which undermines the environmental benefits.